New Orleans Food Trucks Organize to Clarify Regulations

Food Truck Associations have been slowly taking shape in major food truck cities, and it seems that New Orleans will be no different. The New Orleans food truck operators are becoming increasingly fed-up with the status quo, and hope to unite to ease some of the regulations that are prohibiting their businesses. Some of the rules these food trucks hope to rectify concern the number of permits issued annually, the time a truck can stay in a spot, and expanding the allowed hours of operation. The food trucks collectively feel that as the local industry has changed in recent years, the regulations have become outdated.

The food trucks are currently applying for a nonprofit association before they begin clarifying regulations and requesting meetings with city council members. One of the major goals these food trucks hope to accomplish to clear the confusion around many regulations, and emulate the success of food truck organizations in other cities.

Attorney Andrew Legrand believes that bringing the food trucks together will help clearly establish their demands, “We’re at a time when New Orleans has more restaurants than ever before — I think there’s thousands — so why not have food trucks out there kind of contributing to that?” Legrand is assisting the mobile vendors with paperwork.

In Los Angeles, the Southern California Mobile Food Vendors Association is headed by Matt Geller. The organization started with 29 vendors and now has about 140. Geller says it is soon considering statewide expansion. One of the main reasons Geller cites for starting the organization was the same confusion about the rules. “There was a lot of misinformation. Even the regulators didn’t know what was going on.”

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